


Under the Moon

by ImNeitherNor



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Enemies to friends to something, Kissing, M/M, New Years, Speechless Billy, happy endings, king steve, monster fighting, talk about abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-30 03:22:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17216063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImNeitherNor/pseuds/ImNeitherNor
Summary: “Hargrove?”The voice yanks Billy back into the present and he stands up fast enough to make himself dizzy. He blinks twice, shifts his boots in the snow, and looks over to where the voice had floated from. Standing in his Members Only jacket with that fucking bat over his shoulder, Steve looks at him like he’s seen a ghost. Billy clenches his fists and notices how Steve’s eyes trail to the blood on his mouth, the blossoming color on his cheek.“You’re bleeding,” Steve points out, like Billy doesn’tknow that.“Really fucking observant, Harrington,” Billy curls his lip up and flicks his tongue out, over the split, and Steve’s eyes follow it like they always do. It’s a visceral thrill up his spine but anger eats it up. Steve is off limits and, as much as Billy wants to lick into his mouth and feel those lean muscles against his own, he isn’tstupid.





	Under the Moon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lemonlovely](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonlovely/gifts).



> A belated Christmas gift for Lemonlovely, my sweetheart, my boo, my bb. I hope you like it!

**Under the Moon**

   


It’s his first New Year’s Eve in Hawkins, and it’s  _shit_ , like this whole fucking town, like the throbbing on his cheek and the sting on his lower lip. His boots sink into slush on the road, muddy from being driven on, no longer white and pristine. A lot like him, Billy thinks--a lot like  _everyone_. No matter how pure someone appears, there’s always dirt underneath. Sure, the top might continue to look white, pure,  _perfect_ , like the way the snow is coating the slush now, but he knows better.

   


Neil taught him better.

   


Billy runs his tongue over the fresh, blood slicked gash on his lip. When he works his jaw, the shock of pain through his cheekbone almost makes him dizzy. He digs his fingers into his jacket, pulls out his pack of cigarettes, and flips the tab open. A lighter follows, and the red cherry glow is about the only comfort he has as he inhales the nicotine into his lungs. It settles some of his buzzing nerves.

   


He should be at Tommy’s party, drunk and high and ready for the New Year. Instead, he made a comment about Susan not being his mother and lost his keys and gained some new artwork.

   


An hour and a half before midnight and Billy is in the middle of fucking nowhere, walking along the edge of Hawkins’ woods instead of in the warm sand next to the beach like the year before. His fingers had been laced with another boy’s, their shoulders bumping every once in a while, small, knowing smiles traded back and forth. The water had been beautiful under the moon, lapping at their feet, their ankles, and Billy tastes salt in the back of his throat as he thinks about it.

   


Anger is right at the heels of the salt, though, washing it out with white-hot fury. He kicks the slush and feels all of his muscles go taut. He wants to scream, to fight, to light something on fire and watch it burn like he has. Instead, Billy squats down, his elbows digging into his thighs, and he seethes through his teeth in desperate gasps of air. His cigarette lays forgotten on the snow, the glow slowly smothered by the dampness surrounding it.

   


A waste.

   


“Hargrove?”

   


The voice yanks Billy back into the present and he stands up fast enough to make himself dizzy. He blinks twice, shifts his boots in the snow, and looks over to where the voice had floated from. Standing in his Members Only jacket with that fucking bat over his shoulder, Steve looks at him like he’s seen a ghost. Billy clenches his fists and notices how Steve’s eyes trail to the blood on his mouth, the blossoming color on his cheek.

   


“You’re bleeding,” Steve points out, like Billy doesn’t  _know that_.

   


“Really fucking observant, Harrington,” Billy curls his lip up and flicks his tongue out, over the split, and Steve’s eyes follow it like they always do. It’s a visceral thrill up his spine but anger eats it up. Steve is off limits and, as much as Billy wants to lick into his mouth and feel those lean muscles against his own, he isn’t  _stupid_.

   


“Are you  _always_  a dick?” Steve sounds bored and it strokes the fire in Billy’s belly. He walks forward, three strides eating up the space between them until their chests are inches apart, the white puffs of their breaths mingling together. His knuckles itch and he knows the scratch is probably Steve’s face, but as he thinks about it, he also remembers the gut-wrenching remorse he’d felt when he’d seen the damage on Steve the week after their fight. He remembers being bitter and smoking double his normal and instigating bigger, meaner fights with Neil.

   


“Why?” Billy rumbles, “you interested in my dick, Harrington? Are you some kind of fag?”

   


There are a lot of emotions that cross over Steve’s face, then. Shock, anger, disgust, and then it settles on mild irritation.

   


“You’re an asshole,” Steve presses his free hand against Billy’s chest, pushes him just enough to put about a foot of space between them. The heat of his palm is searing, even through his button up, and Billy cackles.

   


“No comeback?” Billy challenges, that itch becoming an ache, a want, a  _need_. “No remarks, King Steve? What, princess gets stolen by some fucking creep and now you’re a bitch--”

   


“Don’t,” Steve snaps and Billy pauses, grins, malicious with a flash of teeth, “talk about them like that.”

   


“Why?” Billy tips his head back. He watches the way Steve’s lips thin, how his grip on the bat tightens. “Are you joining in on the fun? Is that it? Not King anymore because you’re sharing the throne?”

   


Steve’s eyebrows knit together and Billy steps forward again, back into his space.

   


“Or are you on your knees, Harrington?” Billy murmurs, and he knows that the anger boiling under the surface from Neil is being spilled over onto Steve, but he can’t seem to stop. He doesn’t know  _how_  to stop, a spiral of self-destruction, a fuse that when it blows, it takes him out, too.

   


“Back off,” Steve warns. Billy hears the  _or else_ , and he grabs at it like someone drowning grabs at a life preserver ring. 

   


“Make me,” and Billy knows it’s childish, it’s ridiculous, but Steve is carrying a bat around with nails in it on New Year’s Eve. “Well?”

   


Steve exhales, and it’s a long, tired thing, like he’s dealing with a three year old having a tantrum. And well… it isn’t like that idea is  _wrong_. 

   


Billy sneers and moves to grab Steve’s jacket. Almost immediately, Steve drops his bat and knocks Billy back, onto his ass in the snow, with a hard shove and a kick of his leg. When Billy hits the ground, he laughs, surprised and thrilled. His ribs throb in protest, a testament to Neil’s love of his steel-toed boots. It burns bright, gives Billy the edge he needs to roll over and hop back up onto his feet.

   


“Fire, huh?” Billy rearranges his jacket, cigarettes and lighter on the ground from his fall, and steps close to Steve. The guy looks bored, even if his eyes keep flickering to the woods, as if there’s something in there that he’s been hunting with his bat. “Nothing in there is as dangerous as I am,” Billy warns, and he doesn’t expect the burst of laughter from Steve.

   


“I’ve gone up against shit a  _lot_  more dangerous than you, Hargrove,” Steve’s expression twists into something that Billy can only describe as haunted. “You are  _nothing_ \--”

   


Billy doesn’t let Steve finish. He grabs the front of his jacket, hauls him up, and slams him back into the nearest tree. Steve grunts, but other than that, he looks indifferent, and the lack of response fuels Billy’s need to fight.

   


“Say it,” Billy hisses, his knuckles white in Steve’s jacket. “Fucking _say it_.” 

   


“Say what?” Steve challenges, “say what, exactly? What was I gonna say? Are you afraid to hear the  _truth_? Is that it?”

   


Billy pretends like that doesn’t hurt, like it doesn’t scoop out a part of his chest and drop it in the snow. Neil’s litany of  _useless, worthless, waste of space,_ and  _faggot_  bounce around in his skull. He tries to breathe through it, to not let it dig into his brain like it had That Night. Instead, he pushes Steve harder against the tree and leans in, his lips dangerously close to Steve’s ear. 

   


“Better be good,” Billy murmurs, “because I think this  _caring_  bullshit you’ve got going is all a fucking joke,  _King_  Steve. You’re not any better than I am, but at least I don’t  _pretend_  to be better. I’m an asshole and I  _own_  it.”

   


“It’s going to be  _real_  lonely when you die--” Steve stops his statement and his eyes dart to the woods. There’s a distant sound, something Billy doesn’t care about.

   


“Harrington--”

   


“Shut up.”

   


“Don’t fucking tell me--”

   


“Shut your  _mouth_ \--” Steve reaches up and clamps his hand over Billy’s mouth. His cheeks dig into his teeth under the pressure of Steve’s fingers and the split burns against the palm of Steve’s hand. There’s another shriek, and instead of having his eyes on Billy, where he think they  _should_ be, Steve is looking toward his bat. “Get off of me,” Steve says, and there’s a hint of desperation behind all the bravado. 

   


Billy sneers and bites Steve’s hand. He isn’t surprised by the yelp and the hiss, but he is surprised by the sudden force that sends him toppling onto his side into the snow. The air is punched out of him and everything spins with the force of his land. He shifts and blinks blearily up at the sky. What the actual  _fuck_?

   


“ _Hargrove_ \--”

   


Billy tilts his head just in time to see spiraling teeth and flying spit from what looks like a Venus Fly Trap gone wrong. He stares, shock locking his muscles into place. He can’t fucking think, can only drop his gaze from the thing’s mouth to its backward knees and back up. It has no face, and it smells like decay, like roadkill. There’s this moment where Billy is pretty sure he’s dreaming, that he’s back at home and Neil has just hit him one too many times again, that he’ll wake up on the bathroom floor in a puddle of his own blood.

   


It doesn’t happen.

   


The thing screeches, high-pitched, and it must have only been seconds that felt like years before it’s on him. The claws bite into his chest, a distant, sharp pain that reminds him of sheet metal cuts. It takes another second before the pain actually hits him, jars him back into the present, to the  _real_ - _life_  monster about to eat his face. He swings once, punches the meaty petal of its face, and then grunts as the claws dig deeper into his chest.

   


There’s the sound of something swinging through the air, a woosh, and the claws rip free of his chest as it’s thrown to the side. Billy pants through clenched teeth and stares up at Harrington with his bat.

   


“Much scarier than you,” Steve comments and Billy wants to hit him again, but it’s not like he can argue with that. He sits up and looks down. Some of his shirt is torn, sticking to wounds that are wide enough to make him feel light-headed. “You gotta get up. You’re bleeding and they’re attracted to blood.”

   


_You’re bleeding_.

   


Steve had looked alarmed earlier, even paranoid about Billy’s split mouth. He gets it now. Billy pushes up from the ground and then turns just as two more pop out of the woods, shrieking and spitting.

   


“Catch!” Steve throws before Billy is ready, but he still manages to catch the bottle of Farrah Fawcett hairspray. He stares down at it, baffled.

   


“What the  _fuck_  am I supposed to do with this?” Billy demands as those things stalk toward them, sniffing the air, clearly scenting his blood. “I understand you have an  _image_  or whatever to keep up, but--”

   


“ _Billy_ ,” Steve snaps and points down. Billy looks next to his shoe and then leans down to snatch his lighter. “They don’t like fire.  _Fry_  them.”

   


When he looks up, Steve is moving again, a full form, back arching swing that twists his hips. He stares, feels his heart do all sorts of flips, and then uncaps his Zippo. With a flick of his thumb, the wick ignites. He doesn’t have time to think or question or demand answers. As soon as one lunges, he pops the cap off of the hair spray with practiced ease and pushes down. The exploding flame is bright and hot, searing across the thing’s skin and mouth.

   


The screech is different this time. It’s less predatory and more panicked with layers of pain from the flames. He hits the nozzle again, lights the fucker up, and watches as it rolls and struggles to put itself out. Before it can, Billy takes two steps and slams his boot down through its head, blood, black and oily, painting the snow around him. It stops struggling, but just in case, Billy lights it up. When there isn’t any resistance, he turns and hisses.

   


Steve has three surrounding him. One in front, prowling, two on the sides. He’s backing up, toward Billy, grip on the bat tight and nails dripping that same black goop. Billy moves forward while he ignores the continuous ache in his ribs, the new gashes on his chest, and the pressing need to ask Steve  _what the fuck_  and maybe, while he’s at it,  _fuck me as hard as you swing?_

   


Except, he doubts Steve swings like his bat does. The thought makes him cackle, and Steve looks over at him with this  _are you fucking kidding me_  look that makes him laugh harder. The disbelief on Steve’s face almost cancels out the terror of the things surrounding them.

   


Almost.

   


“You’re insane,” Steve mutters at him and Billy grins.

   


“I know monsters,” Billy replies easily. “I mean, he doesn’t  _look_  like these things, but--” he cuts himself off to light the one on the left on fire as it approaches and the noise it makes, the smell it causes, makes Billy’s nose wrinkle up and his eyebrows knit together. 

   


“Do you?” Steve swings, hits one square in the chest. It flies backwards, but gets up almost immediately. Billy shakes the can and shifts, pointing the nozzle in the direction of it. “Are you Max’s monster?”

   


It makes Billy pause and his eyes dart to Steve’s. They’re not on him, though, preoccupied by the two still crouched.

   


“No,” Billy mutters finally and, more so out of spite than anything else, he steps forward before one of them moves and lights it up. “I’m trying to keep her  _safe_  from the monster.”

   


“The,” Steve swings, grunts as he hits the final one, “being singular.” It flies to the side, and just like the previous one, rolls back onto its claws and hisses. “Is it the same monster who beats you regularly?”

   


Billy freezes, but there’s only one left. He can’t bring himself to press the nozzle, the Zippo in the air, flame flickering in the snow, the wind, fighting desperately to breathe oxygen so it can grow. He stares at it and refuses to look at Steve.

   


“Your knuckles aren’t split,” Steve points out and the woosh of his bat is loud in the silence afterward. There’s a crack loud enough that it could only be the thing’s skull splitting in half. It falls to the side, petals open, drooling and bloody. Steve isn’t even breathless. He straightens up, adjusts his jacket, and turns back to Billy. “Which means it’s someone you don’t fight back against. It also happens a lot.”

   


“What are you?” Billy asks as his arms drop, can and lighter clutched in his hands. “A fucking stalker?”

   


“No,” Steve shrugs one shoulder and then shakes his bat, blood spattering over the snow. “I just… notice things, I guess.”

   


Billy thinks he’s going to light Steve on fire. He also thinks he’s going to turn on his heel and bolt. This can’t end well for him, not with the previous king of Hawkins standing in front of him with a straight spine and a calculating look in his eyes. He’s used to dopey Steve--the one who smiles and wanders around and daydreams in class. The harmless one.

   


Not this Steve--wild and strong and  _demanding_.

   


It shouldn’t matter. Billy should just beat Steve’s face in, threaten him about spreading bullshit, about sticking his nose into business that isn’t his. When he opens his mouth to do that, Steve steps forward, into his space, and Billy chokes on whatever words were ready to spill from his lips. He doesn’t back up,  _won’t_  back up, the smidgen of movement a sign of weakness that he only forced himself to show with Neil. 

   


“I also see the way you look at me,” Steve muses, and this close, Billy can smell his expensive cologne. It mixes with the hairspray, the fire, a concoction that he would never have guessed would smell  _good_  until he was confronted with it. He inhales through his nose and tilts his head up so he can look at Steve.

   


“Yeah? Like I want to take a chunk out--”

   


“In the showers,” Steve interrupts and Billy swallows, his throat working hard on the panic forming in his gut and pushing up his throat. “On the court.  _Everywhere_.”

   


“That means you’re looking, too,” Billy points out, but his voice becomes thin. He’s used to being the instigator, the ones who takes, the one who controls. Right here? Right Now? Steve has a full deck and Billy is left with absolutely nothing, pathetically grasping at anything to keep Steve from swinging that bat through his skull.

   


Steve seems to consider Billy’s point, and instead of scowling like Billy expected, his lips curl into a smile. “I think you’re right,” he says, and Billy may just pass out. Maybe the fumes from the hairspray, the lighter, have gotten to his head. Maybe one of the monsters took him down, knocked his ass out, and now he’s in his own version of heaven--hell-- _whatever_.

   


“I’m always right,” Billy manages and Steve laughs.

   


“For a guy with a crush,  _always right_  is probably not bashing my head in,” Steve points at the scar on his hairline and Billy can’t help the rush of warmth in his cheeks.

   


“Yeah, uh, about that…” Billy chews at his lower lip, torn between shoving Steve and kissing that stupid smile off of his face. “My d--monster. I thought I was beating the monster. Mine.” 

   


Steve doesn’t say anything. He watches him with warm eyes and a warmer smile, his bat steady over one shoulder.

   


Steve fucking Harrington, babysitter and monster hunter.

   


“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Billy bites out and Steve shakes his head. “What the fuck? Why not? You figure out I’m some sort of fag--”

   


His sentence cuts off as Steve drops his bat, grabs the front of his jacket, and yanks him so that they’re sharing breath, lips barely brushing, noses bumping just enough for Billy to know that Steve’s skin is cold. 

   


“Don’t say that about yourself,” Steve’s voice is hard, just like it had been earlier when Billy tried shit talking Wheeler and Byers.

   


“Make--”

   


Steve did make him, their lips pressing together in an unyielding kiss. It’s a rush that Billy hasn’t felt in more than a year, a warmth that spreads from his stomach into his chest, smoothing over the thorns he kept sharpened to protect himself. He gasps as Steve licks into his mouth, a move so slick and practiced it’s like he owns the fucking place. Billy lets him, though, opening up while dropping the can, the lighter, so he can tangle his hands into Steve’s jacket.

   


After a few breathless moments, Steve pulls away and rests his forehead against Billy’s. It’s sweet in only a way that Billy has seen Steve be, and it rocks him to the core, a crack in his foundational belief that he can’t be loved, that he can’t be cherished or worth anything more than maybe a fuck, and even that’s a stretch. He has gone so long underneath his father’s roof that  _worthless_  is synonymous with  _Billy Hargrove_.

   


But that’s not what he sees when he opens his eyes to look at Steve. There’s warmth and care and concern, things that he hasn’t seen directed at him in quite some time--things he didn’t think would  _ever_  be directed at him again after his mother died, after they left Cali.

   


It isn’t a kiss by the ocean. It isn’t a kiss with sand and waves at their feet, but as Steve dips down and takes his mouth again in a way that makes Billy feel safe, feel wanted, and they may be covered by snow and monster goop, but the moon above is the same moon he had kissed under a year ago.

   


The sudden beeping in the air breaks them apart, and Billy looks down to his watch. 12:00 blinks up at him, and he smiles, probably the first real one since he’s moved to Hawkins.

   


“Happy New Year,” Steve murmurs, “let’s go celebrate at my place.”

   


“Tell me you have a hot tub,” Billy looks down at the mess on their clothes, “a shower and a hot tub. And booze. Then  _maybe_  I’ll consider it.”

   


“That, but you’re missing the best part,” Steve hooks a finger into his belt loop and pulls Billy back into his space.

   


“Me, right?” Billy grins, cocky and amused, and Steve laughs. The sound reverberates through Billy’s bones and makes it hard for him to breathe.

   


“I was gonna say you, yeah,” Steve returns his grin and Billy blinks, surprised by how honestly Steve says it. He thinks that he may actually be in heaven-hell. “I’d like to know the  _real_  Billy Hargrove.”

   


Billy’s speechless for once in his fucking life, but it doesn’t matter because Steve hooks an arm around his waist, hauls him up, and steals another kiss from him.

   


**Author's Note:**

> Find me at ImNeitherNor on Tumblr and Pillowfort!


End file.
